The willful violation involved multiple instances of employees working in close proximity to exposed and unguarded chain sprockets on chain conveyors, a hazard that can cause permanent disabling injuries. The one willful violation carries a penalty of $52,000.

L&I initiated the inspection after learning that in June 2014 an employee had suffered a serious injury and was hospitalized after becoming entangled in a rotating shaft meant to move bark in the back of a hopper. The investigation found the equipment had no guarding installed to protect employees.

Along with the willful citation, the employer was cited for several serious violations related to machine/equipment guarding, and for not ensuring “lock-out/tag-out” procedures were used to prevent machinery from starting up or moving during service or maintenance by workers.

The employer was also cited for failing to report the hospitalization of an injured worker. By law, all employers are required to report to L&I within eight hours any time a worker is hospitalized or dies due to work-related causes.

A willful violation can be issued when L&I has evidence of plain indifference, a substitution of judgment or an intentional disregard to a hazard or rule. A serious violation exists in a workplace if there is a substantial probability that worker death or serious physical harm could result from a hazardous condition.

The employer has 15 working days to appeal the citation, and has notified L&I that it plans on doing so. Penalty money paid as a result of a citation is placed in the workers’ compensation supplemental pension fund, helping workers and families of those who have died on the job.

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Today’s post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Andrew Francis Wallace/ZUMA

Nearly four years ago, while lifting pallets of blankets during an overnight stocking shift at Walmart, Barb Gertz began to notice a dull pain in her arms. She kept on lifting and stocking, but by the time her lunch break rolled around she could no longer raise her arms. Her doctor told her she had tendinitis in her biceps, and that it was most likely caused by her job. Walmart disagreed. The retailer contested Gertz’s workplace-injury claim—and won.

If Gertz had worked in a factory, she could have bolstered her case with evidence from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s national database of manufacturing workplace injuries. But no such database exists for retail workers like Gertz. A new regulation that OSHA is scheduled to finalize this year would change that. OSHA wants to create a public database of workplace injury and illness data from all industries, not just manufacturing. This would help workers, the government, researchers, and journalists identify companies with safety problems. But the trade groups that represent some of America’s biggest chains—including Walmart, Target, and McDonald’s—are fighting back hard.

The National Retail Federation—a group that represents Walmart, McDonald’s, and The Container Store—spent $2.4 million lobbying on this measure and other issues between JanuaryandSeptember of last year. In a letter to OSHA last March, the group complained that the rule would require…

Today’s post was shared by Gelman on Workplace Injuries and comes from flojcc.blogspot.com

Today’s post is authored by Judge David Langham and shared from flojcc.blogspot.com/

A story was recently published on the WUSF website, Health News Florida. It says that the “prolific prescribers” of some medications are facing “Medicare scrutiny.”

A chart in the story reflects the distribution of 192 top prescribing medical providers in 12 states. Of these, 52, or 27% are located here in the Sunshine State.

The article notes that in 2012, “Medicare covered nearly 27 million prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers and stimulants with the highest potential for abuse and dependence.”

Despite efforts at addressing narcotic use, the article notes that this was a “9 percent” increase compared to 2011.

Thankfully, though Florida has the largest volume of providers represented in this chart, the top prescriber is not in Florida. Dr. Shelinder Aggarwal of Huntsville, Alabama has that distinction. He prescribed “more than 14,000 Schedule 2 prescriptions in 2012.” This amounted to “more than 80 percent of his Medicare patients” receiving “at least one prescription for a Schedule 2 drug, in many cases oxycodone.”Apparently he is no longer a physician, the article notes he “surrendered his medical license” in 2013.

The prescription practices are a “real area of concern” for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the director, quoted in the article.

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Today’s post was shared by The Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group and comes from www.dispatch.com

A false-arrest lawsuit filed by an East Side man against the Franklin County sheriff’s office has been dismissed in federal court.

Antonio C. Morales sued the sheriff’s office, several deputies, the Columbus Division of Police and a police detective in 2012 after he was mistakenly arrested in 2011. Officers and deputies were looking for a man with the same first name, last name and middle initial on suspicion of sexual contact with a minor.

A police detective discovered the error after Morales had been jailed for five days.

Morales said in his lawsuit that his reputation had been harmed and asked for $1 million in punitive damages from each defendant. The case was thrown out and then appealed, and all but one defendant was dismissed.

On Election Day, voters didn’t just rebel against President Obama. There was another pattern in the candidates they chose: Across the country, they picked pols who explicitly supported individual employee rights.

This wasn’t just a canned part of every Republican’s platform. Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Snyder of Michigan, for instance, both won reelection after pushing through significant employee-friendly reforms in their first terms. Even in deep-blue Illinois, Republican Bruce Rauner campaigned on a platform to give state employees the right to decide for themselves whether to join a union.

Pro-employee rights candidates now hold majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate, and it’s time for Congress to deliver the pro-employee agenda that has gained so much momentum in the states. Here’s how members can enhance employee rights in the workplace.

The best legislative vehicle for advancing those rights is the Employee Rights Act (ERA). Led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the ERA has 29 co-sponsors in the Senate and more than 100 in the House. It’s the most significant rewrite of the National Labor Relations Act in decades, with a twist: Instead of the gridlock that comes with trying to rig labor law to benefit either unions or employers, it focuses squarely on the rights of the employees. (All of the law’s provisions can be viewed at EmployeeRightsAct.com.)

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Today’s post was shared by The Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group and comes from www.columbian.com

Woman’s family alleges employees were negligent

The family of a 61-year-old woman whose body was found in March inside a Macy’s department store restroom at the Westfield Vancouver mall has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

Family members of Lydumila I. Tikhomirova of Vancouver allege that Macy’s employees were negligent when they failed to check the women’s restroom before closing time March 9 at the department store at 8208 N.E. Vancouver Mall Drive. A Macy’s employee discovered the woman’s body inside the restroom the next day and called 911 shortly after 6 a.m.

An autopsy showed that Tikhomirova died of congestive heart failure, according to the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office.

"Defendants and defendants’ employees failed to check Macy’s bathroom before the store closed, thereby failing to discover Ms. Tikhomirova in a state of distress, and thereby preventing her from getting the treatment she required to prevent her death," according to the complaint, which was filed Thursday in Clark County Superior Court by Canadian law firm Cross Border Law Corp.

Today’s post was shared by Gelman on Workplace Injuries and comes from www.prairiebizmag.com

FARGO, N.D. — North Dakota has broken its promise to injured workers who rely on workers’ compensation, according to a lawyer who knows the system as a former insider now on the outside.

The bedrock legal promise of providing injured workers “sure and certain” relief in North Dakota has been sacrificed in the interest of saving employers money, Bismarck lawyer Dean Haas argues in an article in the current North Dakota Law Review.

“Employee safety has taken a backseat to saving employers’ money,” Haas wrote in the law review article. “This is evident in nearly every aspect of workers’ compensation in North Dakota.”

Workforce Safety & Insurance, the workers’ compensation program in North Dakota, did not respond in detail to questions prompted by Haas’ law review article.

“Workforce Safety & Insurance is committed to providing injured workers all the benefits they are entitled to receive,” Bryan Klipfel, WSI’s director, said in a statement. WSI did not make anyone available for an interview.

WSI is under the authority of Gov. Jack Dalrymple. A spokesman said the governor has not had a chance to read the law review article, and so was unable to comment by Friday afternoon.

WSI accepts 92 percent of claims, a rate Klipfel said exceeds the rate of similar states. That figure is for initial acceptance, indicating workers’ comp accepts liability, but ongoing claims involve numerous…

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Today’s post was shared by The Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

Anibal Fuentes came to the United States illegally years ago, faced deportation proceedings in December and was ordered to leave the country. Now, he is among a group of people suing the Department of Homeland Security.

An advocacy group filed a lawsuit against DHS Wednesday, alleging that the agency failed to respond to a rulemaking petition filed in February that asked the agency to suspend deportations of undocumented workers and their families and expand the deferred action for childhood arrivals program. A number of people who came to the country illegally, including Fuentes, are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network claims that the agency is in violation of the Federal Administrative Procedure Act. "DHS’s failure to respond constitutes an effective denial that is arbitrary, capricious and void of any legitimate explanation,” the group said in the lawsuit.

"What the law says is, they have to respond in a reasonable amount of time," said Jessica Karp Bansal, a staff attorney at NDLON. "In a case like this where peoples’ lives are at stake, nine months is clearly unreasonable."

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.

The rulemaking petition was filed earlier this year as President Obama was mulling whether he should act alone on the issue. Fuentes and five other people who came to the United States illegally signed on. Now that the…

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About Paul McAndrew

Paul J. McAndrew, Jr. is the founder of the Paul McAndrew Law Firm, focused on Iowa workers' compensation law as well as social security disability and employment law. Paul is an Iowa native and double degree graduate of the University of Iowa. Having practiced law for over 25 years, Paul is annually recognized by Best Lawyers in America.

He is the Vice President of the Workers Injury Law & Advocacy Group, a national organization of workers' compensation attorneys dedicated to protecting the rights of injured workers. Paul is also a frequently published author and educator on the topic of workers' compensation. Read more »

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